


of chess and ice

by thewintersolstice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Camping, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Chess, Multi, POV Ron Weasley, Ron Weasley-centric, The Golden Trio, intended to be Harry/Hermione/Ron but can be viewed as platonic as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28022424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewintersolstice/pseuds/thewintersolstice
Summary: Set duringDeathly Hallows, Ron tries to hold the trio together while they're on the run.Everything felt fragile, in the before. Before Ron had stepped out, with a rush and no ending lined up, gone in a second. Left his two limbs back in the woods without him.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Ron Weasley/Harry Potter, implied
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	of chess and ice

Everything felt fragile, in the before. Before he stepped out, with a rush and no end in sight, gone in a second. Left his two limbs back in the woods without him.

It had been a delicate thing. He felt the ways his edges had frayed and felt tugged on, pulled and ragged. Gone through the wash too many times. He felt it too in the uneasy sway of Hermione’s feet, of how Harry’s eyes never settled on anything for too long, or when he went too quiet, and Ron had to look up, almost frantic, almost as a sudden desire, need to see him -- but Harry’s shadow outside the tent reassured him, even if the dark silhouette of him was hunched, bent over to the chill and hadn’t moved the last few times, last few hours that Ron had gone through this ritual. 

It felt strange but it also felt like it could stretch beyond and beyond into time. As if they existed only inside the tent. He likes when they’re all there, when no one is keeping watch. It doesn’t happen much at all though, for obvious reasons. The flap was always flipped open, slightly ajar, and he could feel the constant enormity of what they’re trying to accomplish at the edges of it, waiting to come in, to push into the space and to breathe its reality onto their pillows and their air and the fragile, delicate thing that he fears will be his fault. His fracture catching on something first, unraveling it. Sometimes, he couldn’t believe how quick it had unraveled. 

But sometimes he felt like the only one who could feel the peace of it, too. Of the frozen time that they’d carved for themselves, caught in the self contained pressure and the way that the carpet caught on the edge of the kitchen, the still forests they nestled in, the harsh, warm shadows of the floating lanterns, the way that the table buckled under scrolls and scrolls of paper plans, shoved into the corner each time they ate. A growing pile that always seemed to amount to nothing but was always stacked back up when spoons dipped into soup, thin and not bad. Not bad but empty feeling. Like there should be a different table in front of him, the emptiness of his mother and of their school and of their lives before they had to be the ones to push soup onto tables that feel crooked and cluttered, and he felt the dizziness of it. 

“Play me, Hermione,” he says, soft, one day when they’re both sitting inside, Harry on watch duty. She has been hovering around the kitchen, the bunks, walking circles that seem to be a checklist, but he can feel the anxiety that’s traced in the half hazard fall of her feet, of the way she feels listless, the way that she bounces back and forth. Not herself, not efficient, which means that she isn’t actually actively doing anything, that she is filling spaces and trying not to think of the things that Ron fears will break down their meager door. “Please?”

He had found the chess set when they walked through a muggle village. It called his name from the shop window and he had a fit of possessiveness, of wanting something to go his own way, and he had gone inside and taken it -- talked the guy up, convinced Harry to slide it into Hermione’s bag while they were preoccupied. Hermione hummed her distaste with the idea, but didn’t argue after, once they’d sat in the woods and he marveled at the shine of the pieces, the new feeling of them, the box. He thought of plays and moves for the rest of the day, humming along with Hermione, who eventually let up and smiled while he detailed a particular game that had caught his brain at Hogwarts.

Hermione looks over, and its as if she has forgotten he was there, maybe in the same way he fears for Harry. He doesn’t hold it against her, but holds out his hand towards the chair across from the table. He’s pushed the pile of papers to the opposite end, set up the chess set, tinkers with adjusting the pieces and feeling them under his fingers. The pieces didn’t move, which is the strangest thing, and an obstacle that he’s worked himself past; still the same principles, but more work on his end. 

“I -- I should...,” and she hovers, pauses, like she’s got a million lists in her head and he can’t imagine the enormity of it, all the small ways she thinks and connects and she’s been sitting on this, they’ve all been sitting on this and it doesn’t leave, but,

“Please, ‘Mione,” he pushes, as much for her sake as for his, and he can feel the shift in her mind, and the quick way her feet come forward. She folds herself into the chair and her eyes are on his, focused, and he’s smiling, not large or bright or loud. Quiet. Everything seemed stuck in silence around them. There was no room for booming laughter and things that shake your chest and feelings that feel too big.

“I haven’t played the muggle version since I was very small,” she breaks the silence, and holds the bishop too, solid in her fingers that are small, thin, but sure as she slides it back on the board. “It feels strange, sometimes, the facade between the two separate worlds,” she says, and its quiet, like she hadn’t first meant to say it, and it’s quiet like everything. 

“But they’re connected, built upon each other.” More firm this time, without waiting for Ron to respond, something that she’s been mulling on. Ron slides his white piece across the board in response, and nods to her, cocks his head. Keep talking. 

Hermione moves the black piece across firmly too, and she watches the stretch of his arm, jumper clad and thick fingers and he slides another pawn forward. 

“We think of things as ‘wizard’ or as ‘muggle’,” she cuts in, back to her thoughts. “But they’re both there. I wonder who first made chess -- wizard or muggle? But it also doesn’t matter,” and she moves her bishop across the board diagonally, small smile of success, and he cheers her too, silently, as she takes his knight. “It doesn’t matter because they both have a history, and they run parallel, at some point. Even so, they’re seen as so distinct... It’s a strange disconnect.” 

_ Like the war _ , Ron thinks, and knows that’s what she means as well. The radio brings too much daily violence against muggles and wizard alike to imagine that it isn’t something that they’re both tied up in, strings laced and woven together for every tired looking town they pass and every name he doesn’t recognize read out in a dead voice, dead air. He imagines the years stretching out behind the solid, unmoving piece of wood beneath his fingers. 

“There’s a lot of disconnect between us and the blighters that invented camping, so I agree,” he says instead, still not looking up at her eyes, but he catches the intake of breath when she laughs, and they’re still quiet. He wonders if this is how they always are, hushed voices, has forgotten what it feels like to yell. He thinks about his family, for a moment, and the way that voices echoed down staircases and across lawns and everywhere. Everywhere it was loud. 

Hermione’s piece makes a soft clack, and it feels like a rebuke, a thought back to a time that isn’t available to him now. 

He pushes down the sick feeling of anger that tickles his chest, and pushes a piece forward again. 

It goes like that, back in forth in peaceful silence, and Ron chooses to lean into it, the moves feeling amplified in the quiet, and he likes watching Hermione’s eyes as she scans the board, back and forth, as he slowly takes the advantage and she watches it unfold and can’t figure how to fix it. 

He laughs out loud after a particularly endless silence where she tries to make a move that won’t lose her a piece. It is inevitable, and she looks up when he laughs, surprise again flashing across them. Forgot he’s there, again, then. He huffs, and his eyes, on instinct, go out to Harry. He’s still a shadow against the tent. He can see the darkness of his back but the sky outside has darkened too, while they were playing. 

He looks back to Hermione, but she is looking at Harry too, and her eyes skitter back to Ron, and he feels the understanding. 

She sighs. “I hadn’t figured out how to get out of it, but I did see your path to victory, so I believe I concede. It might be time to make dinner,” she breathes, quiet, and holds out her hand, in a defeat. He grins and stretches his own out, grasps her smaller one in his and she feels colder than he thought she would. He tugs, holds on longer. With his other hand, he grabs his wand off the table, flicks it up at the lanterns in the room, flaring them brighter. 

Hermione is the one to break their grasp, grabs her wand too, and she whisks a piece of wood across to the fire, and then another, smoke slinking higher in the fireplace as she stands to start kitchen things. He knows that she likes having something to do, an end result to accomplish. That it’s too empty and nerve wracking without them. The sound of the metal pots and pans and the flick of the stove, her quiet spells, and Ron feels at home, comfortable, here. 

“Thank you,” he says, doesn’t feel strange breaking into the quiet clamber of the room now, feels the warmth rising up around him. He could sit here, bask in the moment, for hours. “I’m going to check on Harry,” he says instead, standing from the table.

“You could have saved yourself a couple moves prior though. I saw it too late,” he adds, though, over his shoulder. He hears her laugh, turns to see her look at him, her smile alive on her face.

“Show me how when you’ve come back. Don’t clear the board,” she says in response, and he’s still smiling when he pushes open the tent and hunkers down beside Harry, who looks still and statuelike out in the dark and cold. 

“Hey mate, you doin alright here? ‘Mione’s making food,” he breathes, feels the whisk of his breath away, hot air into the world. He mutters something and Accio’s one of the small lanterns out to them, the fire in a jar. Hands it to Harry without a word. 

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah, thanks. It’s been quiet out,” Harry says, like Ron has broken him out of something deep and thoughtful. 

“Right fucking cold, too,” Ron hums and leans against him, his hand raised against the jar too. Sometimes Harry feels hundreds, thousands of miles and miles away from him, from them, from everything else they’ve done. But Ron knocks his knee against Harry’s and he still feels the comfort and warmth of a moment ago, wants to invite Harry into it. To reign him back down, to them. “Come eat, won’t you? We’re miles off of anything, even Muggle. Eat for a minute, yeah?” he tries to shift him, feels the pull of the locket against his friend’s chest. Aches for the shit that it brings them, having to carry it round. It hovers like a thought in the back of his head he doesn’t want to humor, but instead it hangs around his throat, laid bare and choking all else out of his head, and out of his mouth too. He knows Harry handles it better than him, but Ron still wants to reach out and rip it from him, chuck it into the woods. Let the muggles change the world, for once.

“Please,” Ron whispers, an almost not word if not for the puff of hot air that blows away just as quickly. He feels the hestiance in the shadows on Harry’s face, his fingers moving against the lantern, slowly tracing shapes and circles. He’s pleading with him, feels like he spends so much of his time leading them both away from a precipice that none of them can see. 

He lets the word fall from his lips again because it’s as far as he can get away from the idea that he might be the one to eventually lead them all over it.

“Alright,” Harry says, like its easy, and Ron hefts him up from the ground because they both know it isn’t. Ron hesitates, grips his hand harder around Harry’s own -- freezing cold -- and pulls him in, chest to chest. 

“You worry me sometimes, mate,” Ron says to the top of his head, and he’s still quiet, like they always are, but he can feel the phantom burn of the horcrux between them and feels sick, clenching and unclenching his hands around Harry’s side to rid himself of it, and lets him go. “I understand about your dad and Sirius having the mirrors. Sometimes I feel like you’ll disappear or something.” 

And then they’re walking in, and Harry tells him he won’t, and Ron pretends not to hear the fragility to it. The same way he ignores it in the air, the feeling of cracking ice on the edges of their vision. Eventually someone will brush past the weak point, footfalls a bit too hard, an inch too far, and everything will splinter. 

Ron shoves Harry into the chair next to him, though, and raises his voice to bring Hermione into the argument about her chess skills, and his laugh is loud, intentional, booming, and he  wants it. He wants it to be alright. 

It makes it harder, still, when everything shatters a week later and his hands, his chest, his entire head feels drenched in guilt and in blood and in everything he’d tried so hard to hold together. He forgets the chess set. It doesn’t even cross his mind until Bill brings the game up to try and cheer him. Ron begs off playing, can’t stand how loud the pieces are in the already thundering rush of his head. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after I watched The Queen's Gambit twice and remembered how much I love chess. Also started reading a lot of Ron/Harry & Ron/Harry/Hermione, and remembered how much I like Ron when he's written well. Here's the combination of the two, hopefully. :) I haven't read DH in a long time, so the timing/facts of it might not be exactly right -- forgive me lol.  
> Also I said it in the tags, but this was originally supposed to be more explicitly Harry/Ron/Hermione romantically, but it didn't go exactly where I intended!! Which is lame because I really do want to write some actual polyam between them. Another time, then!  
> Have a great day <3


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